Vehicle-mounted camera systems such as rearview cameras have become mainstays in luxury vehicles and even some lower-end vehicles. Depending on the particular implementation, a vehicle camera system may be used for improved vision, automated parallel parking, and/or other purposes. For example, images captured by vehicle-mounted cameras may be displayed on a navigation system display screen of the vehicle providing the driver with an unobstructed backward view (i.e., better than the rearview mirror) or overhead view of the vehicle (i.e. showing the vehicle's surroundings). In some vehicle-mounted camera systems, several cameras may be mounted to a vehicle to capture all of the surroundings of the vehicle (i.e., the full 360 degrees). Such vehicle-mounted camera systems may utilize wide-angle cameras such as those having fisheye lenses (i.e., fisheye cameras) in order to minimize the number of cameras necessary to capture the vehicle surroundings.
In certain circumstances, it may be beneficial for vehicle-based safety mechanisms to determine the distance of a particular object to a vehicle. For example, vehicle backup sensors may be utilized by an in-vehicle computing system to alert the driver when an object is within a threshold distance or to stop the vehicle automatically. Various techniques and mechanisms exist to determine the distance of objects to a particular reference point such as a vehicle. For example, in-vehicle computing systems may utilize radar, photonic mixer devices (PMDs), stereo cameras, proximity/motion sensors, and/or other sensors to determine the distance of an object from the vehicle.